This essay is neither for nor against Glenn Beck. The philosopher Michel Foucault warns us to be suspicious of proper names because they tempt us to ascribe agency to the person instead of to the overall flow of discourse, knowledge, and power out of which the person emerges as an agent. I seek to provide […]
Spurred by George Handley’s eco-theological reflections in Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River, I’ve been reading Wallace Stegner. Like Handley, Stegner is interested in the tight twine of body, place, and genealogy that makes a life. On my account, Handley and Stegner share the same thesis: if the body is a river, […]
The value of football is found not in fame and fortune, but rather in the potential it provides for cultivating moral and athletic excellence.
When Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz was at the apex of its initial popularity, I was starting as an undergrad in Oregon at Multnomah Bible College (now Multnomah University).1 Miller’s book swelled like music on our campus and others like ours. Many of us carried a secret fear that the joke all Bible and Seminary students […]
Roy Anker has a film book already in print – Catching Light: Looking For God In The Movies. I like it: he’s a lit guy, so he brings substantial insights, treats the films as art not sermon illustrations, and has a pretty good eye for film as well as text. And he writes well. It looks like his new book draws on the earlier volume, but there’s lots new too. . . .
See Part I of this essay series, in which Swanson begins her analysis of evanglical responses to the Twilight series by examining Twilight’s false message of abstinence, and Part II, in which she critiques New Moon’s portrayal of men as “protectors” and women as “perpetual, self-sacrificing victims.” Here in Part III, Swanson examines the dangerous sexual dynamic between Edward […]
That field behind the barn across the road, how it once perfected your desires in summer sun . . . To sit in that grass right now, would you offer up a poem? Let the eyes of orioles fund you— let the wind publish you on leaves? All right, draw one more sip of your […]
My friend and colleague Gregory Hoskins is editing an interdisciplinary journal called Expositions. He and the journal recently hosted a roundtable discussion about the Zizek/Milbank interchange. You can find the discussion here. Contributors include Jeffrey Robbins, Brian Robinette, Frederiek Depoortere, Clayton Crockett, and Adam Kotsko. You can find a link to my own thoughts on the […]
I can’t decide whether this is an incredible little film with a clever soundtrack, or an incredible little soundtrack with clever visual accompaniment. Time Piece, by Jim Henson It’s delightfully inventive, whatever it is. But for his fans, Time Piece has its sobering aspects. It’s saddening to be reminded of Henson’s early genius, considering how […]